Garden of Beasts (42 page)

Chapter Forty-One

I’m a fool, thought Paul Schumann.

He was in despair and there was no bottom to it.

Piloting the Labor Service truck west along rough back roads that led to Berlin, looking in the mirror for signs that he was being followed.

A fool…

Ernst had been in my sights! I could have killed him! And yet…

Yet those others, the young men, would have died horrible deaths in that goddamn classroom. He’d told himself to forget them. To touch the ice. To do what he’d come to this troubled country for.

But he hadn’t been able to.

Paul now slammed his palm against the steering wheel, shaking with anger. Now, how many others would die because of his decision? Every time he read that the National Socialists had expanded their army, that they had developed new weapons, that their soldiers had engaged in training exercises, that more people had disappeared from their homes, that they had died bloody on the fourth square of concrete from the grass in the Garden of Beasts, he would feel responsible.

And killing the monstrous Keitel didn’t take the horror out of his choice. Reinhard Ernst, a far worse man than anyone had ever imagined, was still alive.

He felt tears fill his eyes. Fool…

Bull Gordon had picked him because he was so goddamn good. Oh, sure, he touched the ice. But a better man, a stronger man would not simply have gripped the cold; he would have taken it into his soul and made the correct decision, whatever the cost to those young men. His face burning with shame, Paul Schumann drove on, heading back toward Berlin, where he would hide out until the rescue plane arrived in the morning.

Then he rounded a bend and braked hard. An army truck blocked the way. Standing beside it were six SS troopers, two with machine guns. Paul hadn’t thought they would set up roadblocks this quickly or on small roads like this. He took both the pistols—his and the inspector’s—and put them nearby on the seat.

Paul gave a limp salute. “Hail Hitler.”

“Hail Hitler, Officer,” was the crisp reply from the SS commander, though he glanced with a hint of derision at the Labor Service uniform, which Paul had put back on.

“Please, what is the problem?” Paul asked.

The commander approached the truck. “We are looking for someone in connection with an incident at Waltham Military College.”

“Is that why I’ve seen all the official cars on the road?” Paul asked, heart slamming in his chest.

The SS officer grunted, then he studied Paul’s face. He was about to ask a question when a motorcycle pulled up and the driver killed the engine, leapt off and hurried to the commander. “Sir,” he said, “a Kripo detective has learned the assassin’s identity. Here’s his description.”

Paul’s hand slowly curled around the Luger. He could kill these two. But there were still the others nearby.

Handing a sheet of paper to the commander, the motorcyclist continued. “He’s an American. But he speaks German fluently.”

The commander consulted the note. He glanced at Paul then back down at the paper. He announced, “The suspect is about five feet six inches high and quite thin. Black hair and a mustache. According to his passport, his name is Robert E. Gardner.”

Paul stared at the commander, nodding, silent. Gardner? he wondered.

“Ach,” the SS officer asked, “why are you looking at me? Have you seen such a man or not?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry. I haven’t.”

Gardner?… Who was he?… Wait, yes, Paul remembered: It was the name on one of Robert Taggert’s fake passports.

Kohl had given
that
documentation to the SS, not Paul’s own.

The commander looked down at the sheet of paper again. “The detective reported that the man was driving a green Audi sedan. Have you seen this vehicle in the area?”

“No, sir.”

In the mirror Paul noticed two of the other officers looking in the back of the truck. They called, “Everything’s fine here.”

The commander continued. “If you see him or the Audi, you will contact the authorities immediately.” He shouted to the driver of the truck barricading the road. “Let him pass.”

“Hail Hitler,” Paul said with an enthusiasm he believed he hadn’t heard anyone else use since he’d arrived in Germany.

“Yes, yes, hail Hitler. Now move along!”

An SS staff Mercedes skidded to a stop outside Building 5 of Waltham Military College, where Willi Kohl was watching dozens of troops prowl through the forest in search of the young men who’d escaped from the classroom.

The door of the car opened and no less than Heinrich Himmler himself climbed out, wiped his schoolteacher glasses with a handkerchief and strode up to the SS commander, Kohl and Reinhard Ernst, who was out of the car now and surrounded by a dozen guards.

Kohl raised his arm and Himmler responded with a brief salute and then studied the man closely with his tight eyes. “You are Kripo?”

“Yes, Police Chief Himmler. Detective-inspector Kohl.”

“Ah, yes. So you are Willi Herman Kohl.”

The detective was taken aback that the overlord of German police would know his name. He recalled his SD file and felt all the more uneasy at the recognition. The mousy man turned away and asked Ernst, “You are unharmed?”

“Yes. But he killed several officers and my colleague, Doctor-professor Keitel.”

“Where is the assassin?”

The SS commander said sourly, “He escaped.”

“And who is he?”

“Inspector Kohl has learned his identity.” With a temerity that Ernst’s rank allowed—but Kohl would not dare use—the colonel said abruptly, “Look at the passport picture, Heinrich. He was the same man who was at the Olympic stadium. He was standing
one
meter from the Leader, from all the ministers. He was that close to us all.”

“Gardner?” Himmler asked uneasily, gazing at the booklet the SS com mandant held up. “He was using a fake name at the stadium. Or this one is fake.” The small man looked up and frowned. “But why did he save your life at the stadium?”

“Obviously he
didn’t
save my life,” Ernst snapped. “I wasn’t in danger then. He must have rigged the gun in the shed himself to make it appear that he was our ally. To get under our defenses, of course. Who knows whom else he was going to target after he’d killed me. Perhaps the Leader himself.

“The report you told us about said that he was Russian,” he added sharply. “But this is an American passport.”

Himmler fell silent for a moment, eyes sweeping the dry leaves at their feet. “The Americans would have no incentive to harm you, of course. I would guess that the Russians hired him.” He looked at Kohl. “How do you happen to know of this assassin?”

“Purely a coincidence, State Police Chief. I followed him as a suspect in another case. Only after I arrived here to conduct surveillance did I realize that Colonel Ernst was present at the college and that the suspect had designs to kill him.”

“But surely you knew of the earlier attempt on Colonel Ernst’s life?” Himmler asked quickly.

“The incident that the colonel was just referring to, at the Olympic stadium? No, sir. I was not apprised of that.”

“You weren’t?”

“No, sir. Kripo was not informed. And I just met with Chief of Inspectors Horcher no more than two hours ago. He knew nothing of it either.” Kohl shook his head. “I wish we had been informed, sir. I could have coordinated my case with the SS and Gestapo so that this incident might not have happened and those soldiers not died.”

“You’re saying that you did not know that our security forces were looking for a possible infiltrator as of yesterday?” Himmler asked with the leaden delivery of a bad cabaret actor.

“That’s correct, my Police Chief.” Kohl looked into the man’s tiny eyes, framed by round black-rimmed glasses, and knew that it had been Himmler himself who’d given the order to keep the Kripo in the dark about the security alert. He was, after all, the Third Empire’s Michelangelo in the art of hoarding credit, plundering glory and deflecting blame, better even than Göring. Kohl wondered if he himself was somehow at risk here. A potentially disastrous security breach had occurred; would it benefit Himmler to sacrifice someone for the oversight? Kohl’s stock seemed high, but sometimes a scapegoat was necessary, especially when your intrigue has nearly gotten Hitler’s rearmament expert killed. Kohl made a quick decision and added, “And curiously I heard nothing from our Gestapo liaison officer either. We just met yesterday afternoon. I wish he’d mentioned the specific details of the security matter.”

“And who
is
your Gestapo liaison?”

“That would be Peter Krauss, sir.”

“Ah.” The state chief of police nodded, filing the information away, and lost interest in Willi Kohl.

“There were some political prisoners here too,” Reinhard Ernst said evasively. “A dozen or so young men. They have escaped into the woods. I’ve sent troops to find them.” His eyes strayed again to the deadly classroom. Kohl too looked at the building, which seemed so benign, a modest facility of higher learning, dating from Second Empire Prussia, and yet which he now understood represented the purest of evils. He noticed that Ernst had had the soldiers remove the hose from the exhaust and drive the bus away. The clipboard and some documents that had been scattered on the ground, probably part of the abhorrent Waltham Study, were likewise gone.

Kohl said to Himmler, “With your permission, sir, I would like to prepare a report as soon as possible and assist in finding the killer.”

“Yes, do so immediately, Inspector.”

“Hail.”

“Hail,” Himmler said.

Kohl turned and started toward some SS troopers beside a van to arrange for a ride back to Berlin. As he walked painfully toward them, he decided that he could finesse the incident in such a way as to reduce the risk to himself. True, the picture in the passport matched the face of a man killed in a boardinghouse in southwest Berlin
before
the attempt on Ernst’s life. But only Janssen, Paul Schumann and Käthe Richter knew that. The latter two would not be volunteering any information to the Gestapo and, as for the inspector candidate, Kohl would dispatch Janssen to Potsdam immediately for several days on one of the homicides that awaited their attention there and take control of all the files on Taggert and the Dresden Alley murder. Tonight Kohl would produce the body of the assassin, who died while trying to escape. The coroner would not, of course, have performed the autopsy yet—if the corpse had even been picked up—and Kohl could make sure, through favors or bribery, that the time of death would be noted as occurring
after
the assassination attempt here at the school.

He doubted there would be any further inquiry; the whole matter was now a dangerous embarrassment—to Himmler for being slack in state security and to Ernst because of the incendiary Waltham Study. He could—

“Oh, Kohl, Inspector Kohl?” Heinrich Himmler called.

He turned. “Yes, sir?”

“How soon will your protégé be ready, do you think?”

The inspector thought for a moment and could make no sense of this. “Ah, yes, Police Chief Himmler. My protégé?”

“Konrad Janssen. How soon will he be transferring to the Gestapo?”

What did he mean? Kohl’s mind was blank for a moment.

Himmler continued. “Why, you knew that we accepted him into the Gestapo before his graduation from the police college, didn’t you? But we wanted him to apprentice to one of the best investigators in the Alex before he began working on Prince Albrecht Street.”

Kohl felt the blow in his chest, hearing this news. But he recovered quickly. “Forgive me, State Police Chief,” the inspector said, shaking his head and smiling. “Of course I was aware. The incident here has wholly occupied my mind…. Regarding Janssen, he’ll be ready soon. He’s proving extremely talented.”

“We’ve had our eye on him for some time, Heydrich and I both. You can be proud of that boy. He’s going to the top quickly, I have a feeling. Hail Hitler.”

“Hail Hitler.”

Devastated, Kohl walked away. Janssen? He’d planned all along to work for the secret political police? The inspector’s hands trembled with pain at this betrayal. So, the boy had lied about everything—his desire to be a criminal detective, about joining the Party (to rise through the Gestapo and the Sipo he would have to be a member). And, with a chill running through him, he thought of the many indiscretions he’d shared with the inspector candidate.

Janssen, you could have me arrested, you know, and sent to Oranienburg for a year for saying what I just did….

Still, he reflected, the inspector candidate needed Kohl to get ahead and could not afford to denounce him. Perhaps the danger was not as great as it could have been.

Kohl looked up from the ground at the coterie of SS troops standing around the van. One of them, a huge man in a black helmet, asked, “Yes? Can we help you?”

He explained about his DKW.

“The killer disabled it? Why did he bother? He could have
outrun
you on foot!” The soldiers laughed. “Yes, yes, we’ll give you a ride, Inspector. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

Kohl nodded and, still numb with shock from learning about Janssen, climbed into the van and sat by himself. He stared into the orange disk of the sun, slipping behind a hillside bristling with the silhouettes of flowers and grass. He slouched, head against the back of the seat. The SS troops got into the vehicle and they started off, out of the college, heading southeast, back to Berlin.

The soldiers talked about the attempted assassination and the Olympic Games and plans for a big National Socialist rally outside of Spandau this coming weekend.

It was at this moment that the inspector came to a decision. His choice seemed absurdly impulsive, as fast as the sudden vanishing of the sun below the horizon, brilliant color in the sky one moment then nothing but a blue-gray dimness an instant later. But perhaps, he reflected, his was no conscious choice at all but was inevitable and had been determined long, long before, by immutable laws, in the same way that day had to become dusk.

Willi Kohl and his family would leave Germany.